Walking through the hallways, something will always be heard hitting the floor. Without book bags, students have to heave their supplies from class to class. This results in supplies being dropped constantly in the hallways. Students want their book bags back, they don’t want to have to carry everything to every class.

Students should be allowed to have backpacks throughout the school day.

One reason administration will not permit backpacks is for safety reasons. Students would bring drugs or guns to school and be able to hide them better since they have their book bags with them. This could cause several legal problems and the school wouldn’t even know that students have these things with them.

Is one or two students having drugs in their book bags really dictating whether or not we can have book bags throughout the day? Those 1 0r 2 students aren’t worth it. How many students actually get busted with drugs at school? Not a lot are bringing them into the school if they have them.

Another reason for the back pack ban is that they are inconvenient in the classrooms. The book bags would be all over the floor and in the aisles of the classrooms. This is hard for the teachers because they are unable to walk around their classrooms without risking the chance of tripping on the bags.

It is more inconvenient for students to be going to their lockers during class because they forgot something they needed compared to having their book bags in the class. It is more inconvenient for students who don’t have lockers near their classes so they are scrambling everyday to try and make it to their lockers and back to their next class in time. Many teachers have stated that it was easier last year because they didn’t have to worry about a student missing class instructions to go to their locker because they forgot something. 

For the students with classes in the middle school, having no backpacks is very troublesome for them. They have to lug their things around with them to the class before and after their middle school classes because they have no time to go to their lockers in between those 3 periods. My friend has 6th period lunch and her 7th period is in the middle school. Her locker is on the 2nd floor in the West Wing. Therefore, she has to haul her things to lunch with her and then leave from there to go straight to the middle school. Because of this, she has to make sure she has her 7th and 8th period supplies with her before she goes to lunch otherwise she would have to rush to her locker and risk being late for class.

The hallways are more crowded now because several students have to go to their lockers in between periods. This leads to traffic in the hallways and forces students to be late to class because of the traffic. There have been a few instances where I was late to class because there was too much traffic in the hallways and I couldn’t get through before the bell rang.

The simple solution to these problems is to allow students to have their backpacks. There would be less problems for the students and less problems for the teachers. Shouldn’t the students have a say in this choice? It does affect us more than the people making this decision.